


miles of ghosts

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [316]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A bleak setting, Coping Mechanisms, Forge Boy, Gen, Imaginary Friends, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Slavery, Um...endangerment of a teenager?, in the Vineyard, metalwork, title from a poem by Philip Metres
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: He had been here three weeks; he had made ten guns.They were not as good as Russandol’s.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Maeglin | Lómion
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [316]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	miles of ghosts

Maeglin’s days began with the forge. There were bellows here, just as there had been in the cave, but these were old and leaking. He had already mended the seam twice. There had been more danger of wetness and decay under the Mountain, but for that very reason he and Elias—while Elias lived—had wrapped the bellows in waxed hides each evening.

These had been left in the open air, and the leather cracked accordingly. Even mended, they would never be as good as new.

His other trouble was the fire. It was a bad morning when the forge-fire had burned out. Maeglin did his best to keep it going overnight, sheltering a little blood-warmed glow. He had explained to Glaurung that he rather needed to visit it at midnight, and again in the early morning, because the smithy was drafty.

Glaurung had listened, very amused, and then twisted one of Maeglin’s ears softly in his fingers.

“Are you afraid, my little mole? That I will think you are running away?”

Maeglin couldn’t even shake his head, without hurting his ear. He had blinked a good deal and said, “I only wanted you to understand, sir.”

“I do understand,” said Glaurung. “I’ve smithed myself. You may go out at night whenever you need. I am not afraid of _you_ , certainly.”

Maeglin heaped more coal in, once the fire had awakened in earnest. He had leather gloves that were too large. For delicate work, he had to risk his hands. That seemed right. His eyes stung, and he tried to turn his thoughts to nothing more than his present duties.

At least there was plenty of coal here. Of course there was; Anne McCalagon was rich in it. There was wood, too. Goodley kept them in kindling. Glaurung did not help him.

Russandol did not help, either with the woodcutting or the blacksmithing, but that was not his fault. When Maeglin was alone and the sun reached its winter-pale noon, Russandol loitered at the door of the smithy. His hands were in the pockets of his coat. Maeglin averted his gaze and chose among the scraps of steel; he would melt down yesterday’s ruined barrels to make them anew.

He had been here three weeks; he had made ten guns.

They were not as good as Russandol’s.

Once, he’d been hasty in the cave, and nearly splashed hot metal on his leg. Russandol had knocked him back just in time, and because Russandol was unsteady on his feet, he’d fallen, sprawling and groaning.

Maeglin had looked down at him, breathing hard. Shocked both by the suddenness of it all and by what Russandol had said.

“What did you call me?” he had asked.

Russandol was silent as death, now. His mouth was a white line where he was biting his lips. But Maeglin had heard it. Had heard him say,

_Curufin, have a care!_

“What did you call me?” Maeglin had demanded it again, louder.

Then Murphy had come in. Russandol lowered his head and busied himself with getting to his feet. He had to pull himself up with one hand grasping the edge of the bench. Murphy was too quick for him; he rapped Russandol’s gripping knuckles with the stick he carried.

Russandol had snatched his hand back.

“Help you, shall I?” said Murphy then, grinning at Maeglin. He seized Russandol by the hair. Russandol, gasping, scrambled to his feet as best he could, but Murphy did not release him. He was shorter than Russandol by several inches, but he dragged Russandol down until he was bent at the waist, his hands braced on his knees.

Not fighting.

Maeglin had almost wished he _would_ fight.

“What did you call the little lad?” said Murphy.

Russandol did not answer.

Murphy brought one of his knees up to Russandol’s belly, his thigh striking Russandol’s chin so that teeth clacked together.

Maeglin had been the one to flinch.

Maeglin’s breakfast was little more than bread and cold meat and whatever root vegetables Mrs. Talbot had cooked the night before. There were other women, now, in the farmhouse, but Maeglin avoided them. He could hear them well enough at night. If he came to know them, he knew they would remind him of his old friends, and he could no longer bear to make friends of those he could do nothing to protect.

All the women who had raised him, _really_ raised him, had been kind. Ellen had been his favorite, though she had been the only one to strike him—and that was from grief, not cruelty. She had found him hiding under her bed, and had pulled him out by the heels and swatted him hard on the haunches, crying.

_What did you there, little one? Have you been hiding all this time—_

Maeglin had cried. He was still very small at the time; five or six years old. Ellen had cried harder, holding him close against her soft breast. At last Maeglin had said, still hiccoughing with sobs,

_Did he hurt you?_

Ellen hadn’t told him. But after that, he had understood why he must not be near the working rooms.

Mrs. Talbot’s breakfast was not enough to fill him up all day, but he preferred to spend the dinner hour wandering the scrubby fir-trees behind the smithy and the barn. Russandol liked the open air, and Maeglin could endure a little pain in his stomach to safely walk and talk with him.

 _Who is Curufin?_ he thought to ask, today.

But Russandol, smiling, would not tell him.

“He called me a whoreson,” Maeglin had said, sure that he could not listen to Russandol’s wheezing an instant longer. And though Murphy didn’t know it, and Russandol didn’t know it, it _was_ the truth.

“A whoreson?” Murphy demanded, laughing an ugly laugh. “Well, well. That’s somethin’ extra-ordinary, coming from _him_. See here, Red—have you been telling the lad how _you_ used to spend your days up in the Mountain? I hope not, for his sake.”

Russandol still made no answer.

“Hit him, lad,” said Murphy, beckoning with his stick to Maeglin. “You come and hit him, as hard as you like, for speaking to you so.”

Maeglin had felt his dinner boiling and frothing in his throat. He had shaken his head. But then he remembered where he was, and what he was, and he had drawn himself up. He had made himself enough.

“I wouldn’t dirty my hands,” he said, in as proud an imitation of Master Bauglir’s manner as he could manage.

Elias was still alive, then. He wouldn’t have done it, after Elias—

Murphy had seemed satisfied, and he let Russandol go. Then he strode out, swinging his stick and whistling.

Russandol had lurched forward, and caught himself on the edge of the bench. His knuckles were bruised.

“Thanks,” he had muttered, and turned his head to smile at Maeglin, though his eyes were squeezed shut. Maeglin almost smiled in return, but Russandol kept speaking. “Thank you, for that. And I’m sorry—sorry to your mother, for the insult—”

Almost, and then—

Those words. Maeglin turned away in cold silence, his heart a hollow cry.

The next time they kicked Russandol and called him a bastard, he had smiled, as meanly as he could.

_I was a nasty creature_ , Maeglin sighed. _I am still_.

 _No,_ said Russandol. He was standing beside a fir-tree that was not quite as tall as he was. _No, you’re a good boy. You’ll make a good man. Better than the one I have made._

 _Why did you…_ Maeglin shook his head. That grief felt far, now. Too far to try and understand. And, at any rate, everything he’d ever learned of Russandol had been a lie except the gentleness Russandol showed when they were alone.

Goodley was coming out of the farmhouse, small like an ant from this distance. It was time to go back.

“You’re a quick study,” said Glaurung. “Or you knew a good deal already. Whichever it may be, I’m satisfied with my investment. Here, have another bit of beefsteak. You’ve earned it.”

Maeglin took it. Glaurung ordered his meat so thoroughly cooked that it was almost burned. Still, Maeglin preferred chewing and chewing and _chewing_ , if that meant he wouldn’t have to taste blood on his tongue.

“The world is strange,” Glaurung mused. “A failure for Bauglir means a success for me.” He considered, then poured a little whiskey in Maeglin’s tin cup.

“Thank you, sir,” said Maeglin, though he didn’t care for whiskey.

“I saw you walking,” Glaurung went on, his knife scraping his plate. “Among that grove of trees. Twice now. First time saw you as I came through the grapes. Second time I waited for you.”

The whiskey forgotten, Maeglin’s skin crawled as if a nest of ants had sprung up beneath it.

“You were talking to yourself.” Glaurung’s light eyes appraised him. His mustache glistened in the candlelight. The wax he used upon it always seemed fresh. Perhaps he applied it more than once a day. But Maeglin was rambling, in his thoughts. He’d be called upon to answer in a moment. He must be ready.

Glaurung said, “You were speaking silently. I could only see your lips moving. And that’s what intrigued me. That’s the sort of secrecy that wants questioning. I used to say to the masters—slave-masters, you understand, not those with a friendly bond as you and I have—that the moment to watch was the moment when they started thinking private thoughts. When they run, they don’t teach you anything. Tell me what they were like _before_ , I would say. Tell me what they were like when they first began living for themselves.”

“I had to clear my head,” Maeglin said. He cut his meat. His hand did not shake; it was a craftsman’s hand. He was a boy, but he had a man’s hands. He had begun to learn the trade when he was eight years old. For two years, he did not see her at all, and he did not spend all of those two years with his women. He was “apprenticed” two doors over, to a kindly man with a fringe of a beard round his face and a hundred hammers, large and small.

When the two years were over, and she came again, everyone spoke of his skill.

After that, he was always stationed near a smithy. He could turn a horseshoe in his sleep. That was what he liked to think, because his first teacher had said it of him.

“Whispering to nothing,” Glaurung pressed, “To clear your head?”

“Yes,” said Maeglin firmly. He had sometimes been tempted to speak aloud. To say Russandol’s name into the wind. He believed now, as sure as he still lived, that it was Russandol who had prevented him. Who had held him back as from the burning, from molten metal and its flesh-destroying touch. “You have worked at the forge yourself, haven’t you, sir? Did not you do the same?”

Glaurung grinned and rubbed the fingers of one hand together, as if to rub a coin. “Oh,” he said. “I like you better and better.”

Maeglin stayed still.

“You have a little spine,” said Glaurung. “When you’re secret-keeping.” He whistled to one of the girls who was crouched in the corner, waiting for his bidding. “You! Harriet. Come here.”

She rose and shuffled towards him. She was young, thought Maeglin. Or maybe he was older now, and the women did not seem so grown-up to him.

“This is Harriet,” said Glaurung. He wiped his hand on her thigh, then reached up to pinch her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Good teeth, like a horse. But that’s not all she’s good for. Harriet, you will go to Maeglin’s room tonight. Make a man of him.”

Harriet nodded.

“Go and wash, then,” Glaurung said. “He’ll be along shortly.” To Maeglin, he said, “They’re filthy, if you leave them to themselves.”

They finished their supper. Maeglin was sure he would choke, or cough up what meat he’d swallowed, but he didn’t.

He didn’t, even though Russandol was nowhere to be seen.

“Go on,” Glaurung said, afterwards. “You must be eager to become a man.” He let out one of his high, fierce laughs. Then, just as Maeglin had started up the stairs—“We shall go south in the spring, little mole. There’s much to be done.”

“Very good, sir,” said Maeglin. “I—I look forward to it.” He wished, as he often did, that he had trusted his old teacher when he knew him. But men had been a strange and frightening thing, then, and he had been shy and quiet. He had not known a kindly face again, from one of his own kind, until—

He knew nothing of kindliness now, as Glaurung, still laughing, waved him away.

Harriet, her face shining with water (or tears, Maeglin supposed) was seated on the edge of his bed. Maeglin shut the door.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t want—any of it. But you may stay here.”

“He’ll know,” she whispered. “If I don’t—”

Maeglin thought of Ellen, and Rosie, and all of his kind friends. He wanted to tell poor Harriet all about them. He wanted to tell her about Russandol, but Russandol was gone. “I had a friend,” he said, anyway. “He…I wasn’t a very good friend to him, but he was kind to me. He said it is very important to tell part of the truth, when you can’t tell it all. They know when you lie.”

Harriet nodded. There was nothing Maeglin could have done to hurt her that Glaurung had not already done. He stepped forward, and took her hand, squeezing it a little. Then he kissed her on the cheek.

“There now,” he said. “You kiss mine, too, and you won’t have to lie.”

Across the room, Russandol flickered to life, and smiled. 


End file.
